


Dreams of lightsabers (and our memories)

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Lightsaber, Stormtrooper, The Force, discovery of the force, force-sensitive character, stormtrooper character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7301677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'What are you?' Kylo Ren is nothing like she had expected, an ordinary, plain face, wide owlish eyes and he's powerless and he knows it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams of lightsabers (and our memories)

When K-T22 felt the Force for the first time, it changed everything, forever.

The reason number one was commander Ren's lightsaber. The mess of wires and bolts and metal plates fastened tightly to the knight's belt had always intrigued her. She had seen a lightsaber once – like all Stormtroopers, K-T22 could only recall so much, but she remembered herself as a small nameless child in her mother's arms as her father wielded his burning orange saber.

K-T22's father had not been a Jedi himself, but his father had met one and the Jedi had given him his saber on his deathbed. The artefact was passed on to K-T's father, but she had not inherited it. When she went off to the Academy, she could only bring along one small suitcase of clothing.

She had forgotten almost everything – her father's name, her own – but she remembered the burning orange color like a dying sunset. 

Commander Ren always carried his lightsaber, but he had never used it, at least when K-T was present, which was almost all the time since the lieutenant was a part of his personal guard. An ever-present quiet shadow, pacing loudly behind him, following his ever-changing twitchy rythm along with two shadowtroopers specially trained to be bodyguards. 

When she followed the commander around, she sometimes wished that he would leave his saber unattended for just a moment, just so that she could turn it on to see the color. But he never did.

###

Commander Ren was a dangerous man, K-T knew that. He was known to lash out at soldiers for even slightest details gone wrong, such as escort droid being late or even fingerprints on the visors of their helmets.

Their memories were reason number two.

K-T had not helped the resistance pilot run away. She was loyal to the First order. t wasn't her fault that one of her stormtroopers had gone rogue. F-N was such a quiet, productive, quick learning soldier, she reported. She knew nothing of his threcherous plans. She was interrogated anyway.

The shadowtroopers came one day to tell her that Commander Ren wants to see her. Fear immediately downed on her – was she chosen to be Kylo Ren's scapegoat when things didn't go as planned? When she knocked on the door of Commander Ren's study, two shadowtroopers snached her blaster.

The smell of freshly burned target in the practice center filled her nostrils. It has been so long since she's last been unarmed.

Ren was backfacing her, hood covering even the back of his head from her.

The shadowtroopers were standing by his side. Only hours ago, I was standing there along you, looking down at whoever was sitting in this chair. She thought as the chains that hung from the arm rests wrapped themselves around her arms at Commander Ren's will. 

The air around her filled with electricity.

'Did you assist the Resistance pilot known as Poe Dameron? No? Oh, we'll see.' Commander Ren's mechanic voice echoed nicely in the small space. He seemed a tad surprised to hear a feminine voice come from behind a stormtrooper's helmet. 

Ren turned to face her.

His face forged out of cold metal reflected the blue of the LED lights, and trough the slit in the mask she thought that she could see the slightest hint of eyes – dark and filled with rage. She felt the rage deep inside her bones, mixed with remorse and fear. A dangerous and unbalanced mixture of emotions that were not entirely her own.

Kylo Ren was inside her head.

Peep, peep, red alert. the red lights inside her head spinned round and round. Red alert, danger. The enemy is in the base!

And then for countless centuries they shared memories – their first steps in their mother's arms, the tickling feeling of thin brown hair on their cheeks, the warm sun carresing their tanned skin.

Their father's orange lightsaber, slashing trough the air, their elated childish giggles. Their depart to the stormtroopers academy, their first bunk in the girls' dorm. 

The smell of freshly burned target in the practice centre.

Their first battle, their lost helmet and a stream of hot, blue fire. Their burned faces and their right eyes that are now blind. Their skin that is, now, years later, red and sensitive and a small implant on the eyelid that helps them see.

Then she's flooded with events that didn't happen – she's walking behind Ren, when suddenly she grabs his lightsaber and turns it on, and a stream of red illuminates their faces, her burned one and his pale one – for in this scene he does not wear a mask but rather a stain of indescernable colors.

He looks at her in horror as she swings the lightsaber trough the air, the moves come to her natural and beautiful-

No. These are not his memories. These are her memories, and they're for her only.

Get. Out. Of. My. Head. She screams, but it's not her screaming, it's him. 

When he exits her thoughts and she's alone again, he flinches like he's burned by the metaphorical touch of their minds.

'Lieutenant?' His mechanical voice asks from behind the mask, filled with rage and something she can't discern.

'Yes, commander?'

'How did you do that?' he demands.

'I didn't do anything, commander.' she swears. The memory of his violent enterance and sudden disappearance from her head still burns hot, and she isn't happy to relieve it.

The shadowtroopers release the chains and she trots back to her quarters.

###

She looks in the mirror, and a face from her nightmares stares back at her.

One side of her face is clear, with tanned skin and a dark brown eye and a thick, black eyebrow. It has dark lips and a strong jaw, and it's not beautiful but it's hers and it's untouched.

The right side of her face is a storm. Old burns mar the skin, making it red and shiny and painful to touch, and her eyebrow grows only at some places. The lip is crooked, long ago cut with a longsword and the bad eye is forcefully closed with a metal device. 

A red storm on jupiter.

###

In her dreams, she is in battle again. She can see the frozen crust of Hoth beneath her boots and the blaster in her hands that's catching fire, when suddenly it isn't there anymore.

She's standing on the greenest grass she's ever seen, and around her floats a blue, electrified shield. All around her there are explosions and fire, and there's a young woman in white with a blaster in her hands.

The woman looks right into K-T, and fires her blaster.

The laser stops mid-air.

'Lieutenant?' Asks the woman. 'How did you do that?'

###

They're small children on their father's shoulders, when something changes and they aren't. Commander Ren is staring at her with his faceless head and he asks her 'How did you do that?'

'I don't know, commander!' she screams 'You messed with my head and now everything's gone wrong!'

She realizes how ridiculous she sounds, but she doesn't wake up. Commander Ren grabs her by the collar.

###

She's sitting on cold stone floor, and there's no one around her but a small shadow.

'You do that how did?' asks the shadow in a worried tone. 'Within you Force there is.' it answers itself.

'I-'

'Into his hands must it not fall.' the shadow says, and than she wakes up.

###

The nightmares are reason number three, and four, and five.

The next day she looks up the term force-sensitive in the library, and finds that jedi, sith, rogues and knights fall into that cathegory.

The following day, reason number six occured to her.

###

She came to work as usual, trotting behind commander's back with the familiar smell of smoke in her nostrils. She follows him into the interrogation room. Inside, there's a young woman tied to a chair, the same one she had been sitting on days earlier.

'Leave us.' says commander, and he closes the door as she walks out. Her thoughts linger on the faceless woman's torture, when you realize something.  
Commander Ren has left his lightsaber outside, on a polished shelf where there's already a smashed black helmet that looks like it's been trough a war.

It's right here, within her fingers' reach, and it's calling her. The young woman in her dream, the shadow that speaks with itself and her father's orage lightsaber.

She closes her fingers around the cold metal, well aware that she will face the full rage of the knight if Commander Ren happens to walk out of the room, but she does it anyway. The need to connect with the nameless force that's calling her is too strong, and the only way to connect is to turn a lightsaber on. She's always known that part.

She presses the button.

It's nothing like she thought it would be – she always imagined the destructive power flowing from Commander Ren's hands to the lightsaber, him and the saber conected, creating the blade to destroy.

It's not like that

Power flows into her from all around, from the Force, through her hands. She's only a tool, as well as the saber, and when the red blade appears bright and sharp and unbalanced she's completely free of the demons, her power channels out into the universe and she knows what she must do.

She waves the blade, cutting trough nothing, painting the walls red with light, and the moves come to her natural like in her dream. Her armor doesn't restrict her anymore, she can perform even the most subtle motions when-

The commander opens the door, and he's unmasked and straight out horrified just like in the vision they shared.

He's much younger than she had expected. The colors morph into features – wide, owlish dark eyes and a splash of dark freckles and moles around his overly large nose and ears, plump lips parted in disbelief. 

She always feared the automathic, strict, elderly man behind the mask. This Kylo Ren, she thought that nothing he could do could terrify her-

And the air around her seems electrified!

'What are you?' he asks in inaudible words, his voice high without the mask.

'I am the Force who dreamed that she was a stormtrooper.'


End file.
